


just kids in the eye of the storm (i dream of home)

by eternalgoldfish



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Eddie Kaspbrak, Dark Comedy, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It of Sorts, Gay Richie Tozier, Inappropriate Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24062797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalgoldfish/pseuds/eternalgoldfish
Summary: Richie remembers a boy with brown hair and big eyes, scrawny arms and a huge forehead. But not a face, really, or a name. Just this lingering sense that there is someone, somewhere, that needed him once, maybe.And that’s really the fucking sad bit, that at forty, he’s still thinking about grinding his dick against an unnamed teenager, even though he knows it’s a memory from when hewasa teenager.It would make great stand-up material, really, if it wasn’t so fucking sad.Everyone remembers their first love, right? How they smiled? How much you wanted to stick your cock in their mom? Anyway,He’s got a few ghostwriters now, and that’s maybe for the best.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 52





	1. cinders and rain

There are pieces of time Richie knows are missing, although his awareness of them feels as gradual as the speed at which they were lost. A sort of long creeping up his spine when he thinks of childhood and home, of the years between zero and eighteen, where he knows life must have been between birth and college. He remembers the streets of Derry in passing visions, shopfronts, the smell of the arcade. He remembers turning thirteen and realizing with a screeching, vomitus lurch that _gay_ wasn’t just a word for describing dying men on TV.

He remembers there must be a boy that made him realize that, beyond the paused image of Rob Lowe on his TV when his parents weren’t home, when he had enough time to jerk off to _The Outsiders_ ¸ a weird blend of shame-guilt-spew climbing up his throat.

There’s always been this sense that there’s someone he’s missing. In college, he knew there was someone he was meant to call, but their name was always on the tip of his tongue, not quite close enough to lick. He had a book of phone numbers that had no names attached, and couldn’t bring himself to call any of them, to figure out why he might have done that.

Who were these people, if he thought he’d know their names by their numbers? But it would be stupid to call them up like, _hey, it’s Richie Tozier, is your mom home?_

And over time, that niggling had faded to almost nothing, too lost in a sea of late-night comedy clubs and whiskey bottles. Alcohol drying up his humour as he made it big in L.A.

But he remembers Derry at night, sometimes. Remembers how cicadas chirped in summer, like every other story-telling sap says.

He remembers a boy with brown hair and big eyes, scrawny arms and a huge forehead. But not a face, really, or a name. Just this lingering sense that there is someone, somewhere, that needed him once, maybe.

Something broke them in their childhood, he knows that much. Knows it from faint memories of that boy rattling apart with him. Not _sexually_. Never sexually. But as he’s gone from twenty to twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, Derry’s slipped away, no longer a question mark, just a place he lived once, where bullies and small towns and Maine compacted his terrified, wheezing lungs into punchy comedy.

He could never be who he was, it was off the table. But there had been a boy.

He remembers his arms around a shaking waist under the covers of his bed, someone going on and on and on about something, always something. He knows in his gut that the boy was there because sometimes the boy’s chest rattled too much, that when he slept over, he couldn’t stay on the floor, something about his back, and germs, and the dark emptiness under the bed.

Some kind of choking, asthma attack, panic attack, heart attack, diabetic shock?

_Talk me down._

As Richie’s become twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, he realizes it’s probably fucking creepy that he still wakes up hard, remembering how he’d wake up at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen with his morning wood pressed up against some kid’s ass, and how the kid hadn’t cared, because _everyone_ knew Richie Tozier was a panting horn-dog. Everyone knew that fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-year-olds woke up that way, almost always for no reason.

He remembers being _trusted_. To behave. To be unattracted. Because what else would he do?

He remembers trying his best not to rock himself against that ass, to keep his mind away from how his slicked cock would feel rutting between those cheeks. Because that wasn’t what he should have been thinking about, and it wasn’t what anyone should know he wanted, because that’s not what anyone did in small town America during the nineties.

And that’s really the fucking sad bit, that at forty, he’s still thinking about grinding his dick against an unnamed teenager, even though he knows it’s a memory from when he _was_ a teenager.

It’s the principle of the thing, that his ingrained memories aren’t of the women he briefly pretended to date, before he got famous for saying shitty things about women. That those memories aren’t of the men he’d spent nights with over the last twenty-something years, waking even in their sheets with someone else’s name just beyond his tongue. That he’d never stayed with those men long, too scared to come out, too distracted by this ghost of a boy he couldn’t place.

It would make great stand-up material, really, if it wasn’t so fucking sad.

_Everyone remembers their first love, right? How they smiled? How much you wanted to stick your cock in their mom? Anyway,_

He’s got a few ghostwriters now, and that’s maybe for the best.

So, when he gets a call from Mike, telling him to pack a bag, he throws up.

He doesn’t know _why_. Other than the bile in his throat and the weighty anvil crushing his lungs. The surge of _nothing_ that spills from him when he gets on stage after the call, because the universe suddenly makes no sense, and he doesn’t remember _why_. Doesn’t even remember his _name_.

But he knows there was a boy in Derry who’d wanted him to spend the night, keep him close, just a friend. A boy in Derry who would have knocked on his door in the evening, shaking like a leaf, something horrified in his eyes that half-matched Richie’s horror as he held him.

And that boy isn’t why he cancels his next gig and drives across the country.

But the second he sees the back of Eddie’s head, he _knows_. Takes a sharp breath that leaves his jaw hanging a second too long, because it’s been twenty-something years and Eddie is the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen.

And he knows Eddie is married.

He knows Eddie trusts him after one glance, trusts him with everything, even though they’re forty. Even though neither of them have voiced it, or ever would, just looking at each other from across the room. And maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

Or maybe Eddie feels that too, wants that too, that familial closeness. Even though it would be inappropriate, _weird_ for them to curl together now, without the confusing intimacy of childhood blurring the lines of where your body is meant to end and your best friend’s body is meant to begin.

It’s that weird line he learned the boundary of when he was nineteen and kissing girls in college. When he was twenty-two, twenty-three, and sharing a bed after a house party with anyone was suddenly off the table.

Being an adult is like experiencing the fumbling cringe of puberty over and over again, relearning which parts of life should be boxed up by age and occupation. What you’re meant to do with your limbs, and your smiles, and your running mouth. And that _should_ be good comedy material.

Richie doesn’t feel like it is, staring at the man he’s loved for thirty-something years over sweet and sour pork at a Chinese restaurant, as the man he loves tells them everything about his wife. As Eddie laughs and passes pictures of her around the table on his phone, like all the others are doing with their spouses or their girlfriends, or their dogs.

There’s a joke in here, maybe, about Richie’s chihuahua getting deported, but he can’t find it around the fuzz on his tongue. Just jokes about fucking Eddie’s fucking mom.

And how Eddie has married his fucking mom. So now _he’s_ fucking his mom, maybe sometimes. Not that Richie’s going to voice that part, or linger on how badly he wants it to be true. How badly he hopes it’s a sexless, disappointing marriage, even though he knows that’s vindictive and unkind.

For once in his fucking life, he can half-hold his tongue.

Maybe it’s because he’s trying to convince himself that this gut-punch of want is just nostalgia. He doesn’t know Eddie. Can’t possibly be in love with the risk-assessment obsessed businessman across the table who vaguely resembles the short-stack freak who gave him his first real boner.

It’s a lot.

Richie drinks a lot. Definitely too much to be driving back to the townhouse after dinner, which Eddie doesn’t even mention when they’re getting in their cars at the same time. Eddie should be riding his ass, all, _do you know how much more likely you are to crash your car after that many drinks? Do you know what the fines are for drunk driving here? You could go to jail, Richie. Fucking_ jail. _For life. You’ll hit someone and die and go to jail._

So maybe things have changed. Or maybe Richie just remembers a lot more of Eddie than Eddie does of him, even if sitting next to each other had them slipping into their old patterns, bickering like children. Picking at each other’s scabs because they _can_ , not because they want to. Because it’s how they fit together, gangly teenage legs tangled in a hammock, embarrassingly knobby knees, Eddie’s disgusting foot kicking him in the head.

_I can see your vagina!_

And _fuck_ , does Richie wish he had.

_Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock_ has always sounded like it should be the punchline of one of his jokes. He’s remembered the ache of it, always. The one fragment of that awful summer that was apparently too awful to ever shake.

_Every high school has those motivational quotes and shit written on their bathroom stalls, right? From the kids who are deep and read Shakespeare or whatever. ‘Call Amber Peters for a good time.’ ‘Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock.’ Real poetry of the soul._

If only they’d known. The high school fuckheads, that is. There’s no way Richie could ever say that into a microphone without it squeaking out like a pathetic admission.

So, he writes jokes about fucking women, about how big his cock is. About how he dines and dashes _pussy_. Like he eats out as much as Guy Fieri. _Diners, Drive-ins, and_ _Dives_ , if you know what he means.

Nothing about _flamer cock_ , even though it sounds like exactly something he would say.

This is what he’s thinking, pulling Eddie’s limp body from the sewers.

Not about how they killed that fucking clown. Not that Eddie is probably going to die, might already be dead, from how he keeps sagging off Richie’s back as they climb the ladders, maybe only hanging on because Ben keeps pushing him up from below.

Richie can’t think about it.

_Talk me down._

He can’t think about how Eddie used to hyperventilate, even once he knew he didn’t have asthma. He can’t think about how Eddie used to show up as his house with band-aids covering unscraped knees, chest heaving, like, _I need you to – I need you to help me –_

Because then Richie will hyperventilate, and he’s not the one who does that.

 _Talk me down_.

Maybe he should start working on his next act. It could use that _first love_ concept as the base, start off with a glib joke about forgetting Eddie’s name, but hearing Eddie’s voice in his head for twenty-something years, asking for the thing he always needed, the one thing Richie could usually do.

There’s a joke in there somewhere too, about being a human inhaler, but he’s not sure how to turn, _deep throating my cock calms guys down,_ into something less gay, and frankly less disgusting.

It’s just a little rapey, given the circumstances, and Richie has learned how to read a room. Maybe. Sometimes.

Eddie would have never done that when they were teenagers, anyway. Even if Eddie wasn’t straight. Richie can practically hear him saying, _That’s fucking disgusting, Richie. Do you even wash your dick? Do you have a ton of dick gunk? This is how people get throat herpes. I don’t know, you get cold sores, maybe that means you already have dick herpes too, like, inborn dick herpes, my mom says –_

He probably doesn’t eat out his wife.

Richie is going to keep telling himself that.

“Is she always like this?” Richie asks.

It’s been over two weeks, just long enough for them to rush Eddie in and out of surgery a thousand times. They’ve dialled down his morphine drip enough for him to keep his eyes open and make coherent sentences, and he’s doing better with the oxygen mask. He still winces with every movement, though. That’s probably what a giant hole through the chest and a punctured lung will do to a guy.

No one has asked why Richie is still in Derry, or why he’s answered every call to his manager claiming a family emergency. It _is_ a family emergency. It’s just not his family.

“Can someone _please_ tell me where they keep the blankets around here? My husband is freezing! He’ll get pneumonia like this! I’ll get the damn blankets myself, if you’re all too useless to do it. He has asthma and a _punctured lung_ ¸ he could die from this!”

Eddie looks at the ceiling, chest rattling in what is probably meant to be a sigh. “Yes.”

Myra Kaspbrak is exactly how Richie envisioned her, and he’s still not sure if she makes his stomach roll because she’s a massive bitch, or if it’s because Eddie’s called her mommy twice while doped up. And it’s not a sexy mommy thing, either, although Richie wouldn’t be surprised if that _was_ one of his kinks.

There is a joke in here about having a bottle Eddie could suck on, but Richie’s almost seen Eddie die about a thousand times over the last two weeks, and all he wants to do is sit by his bedside and hold his hand. Maybe crack a few soft, unassuming jokes about how Eddie’s new scars are going to get him beat up, when bikers mistake him for being in a biker gang. Risk analyst who? Although Eddie looks more like he belongs on an episode of _I Survived_ , which is maybe too accurate for Richie to stomach.

He wants to sit by Eddie’s bedside and hold his hand, but he doesn’t. Or he does, but he’s not on the edge of the bed, like he would like to be, smoothing down the sheet over Eddie’s thighs. He’s in a chair about a foot away, leaning forward with his hands clasped together in his lap, looking between Eddie and his wife like, “She does know you don’t have asthma, right?”

“In theory.”

“It’s not really a theory, either you have it or you don’t have it.”

“Is that what you tell yourself about your halitosis? Stop breathing on me.”

“Oh, what was that? You want me to breathe on you? You need some mouth to mouth, baby? C’mere, if you wanted to experiment, you only had to ask—”

He moves like he’s going to, like he’s not already trying to drown in his own words, his own stupid mouth that runs about as fast as his brain, and he’s never been able to slow down _either_ of them—

Eddie glares from under his oxygen mask and whines, “Don’t fucking touch me,” like he’s thirteen, and like he doesn’t remember years of being folded in Richie’s arms, Richie breathing for the both of them.

 _Talk me down_.

Myra hates Richie for all the reasons Mrs. Kaspbrak hated Richie. He’s too loud, too crass. Too dirty. A bad influence who almost got her husband killed exploring an abandoned house, like they were fucking teenagers.

She doesn’t understand how her husband knows one of the most famous comedians of the last two decades, or how they could possibly be childhood best friends without her ever hearing a peep about Richie Trashmouth Tozier. She thinks her husband needs a brain scan. She thinks Richie has hypnotized him, or indoctrinated him into a cult, or maybe given him a lobotomy.

She likes to throw a lot of fancy medical words around, but it’s become clear that she has no clue what she’s talking about, possibly ever. It’s all, _tell me you love me_ ’s, and, _they told me not to touch your bandages, but you’re bleeding out, baby. Let me put some cream on that. Stop moving. If you die from ripping those stitches, I’ll die too. You can’t leave me, Eddie._

And Richie had never understood how someone could feel like that, before. Like someone was one side of his heart, that he’d splurt blood and shudder and dry up if they got split apart. But he knows it now. Knows it like he’s learned the pattern of Eddie’s crow’s feet, watching Eddie sleep for weeks while coated in a blanket of drugs and machinery.

He knows it from seeing Eddie speared above him, saving his life twice.

Richie had been hoping for a kiss from his knight, for about one second, and wasn’t _that_ the punchline of the century.

Richie’s been twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, and Eddie makes him feel sixteen and shaking, hoping maybe one day Eddie will figure out his morning wood and roll in his arms. Hoping that Eddie will figure out why Richie’s always been sad and single and desperate, without Richie having to say it.

He still wants that boy from Derry to kiss him, to tell him _we’re alright_ , and _we’re okay_.

Like he’s a fucking baby, or something, who can’t handle his own big gay elephant in the room.

_I know your secret. Your dirty little secret._

It’s actually kind of funny, in retrospect, that a demon would see his fears and think that a giant, burly lumberjack would be a good threat. There’s a joke in there somewhere about a well-hung man who knows his way around wood.

“Why are you still here?” Myra asks. “I told you to leave. He needs his rest. I don’t understand why they won’t make your room family only, Eddie.”

“He’s fine,” Eddie says, “I want him here.”

“He’s who got you here! You need to tell him to leave.”

“Uh, I’m right here? I can hear you?”

Myra doesn’t even look at Richie, hands still on her hips as she looms over her husband. “Eddie,” she says, “You’re never going to recover like this. He’s here keeping you awake all the time. I only want what’s best for you. He needs to leave.”

Eddie tips his head enough to look at Richie, eyebrows a little raised. The same look he used to give Richie when his mom told him they couldn’t play today, because the sun was too hot for Eddie’s delicate skin, or because Eddie was looking tired, even though he felt fine. It wasn’t a look Richie could argue, because Eddie was done arguing.

“Alright, fine. I’ll just fuck off, I guess.”

“Back to L.A.?” Myra says, smile thin. “Have a nice flight.”

She doesn’t mean it, but Richie drives home the next morning anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh, this isn't my normal fandom, so I really hope I'm doing it justice???  
> Thank you so much for reading!  
> And big love to uncaringerinn and unsaltysaltines for listening to me whine.  
> Feedback is always loved and massively appreciated.  
> (I'm really very worried that I have no clue what I'm doing here.)  
> Please feel free to hit me up on Tumblr @eternalgoldfish, I love friends!  
> And I hope you're all doing well this week.
> 
> The titles are from "Daniel" by Bat For Lashes.


	2. marble movie skies

“I told Myra I’m going on a business trip.”

Richie pushes his glasses up to rub at his eyes, phone pressed to his ear. “Are you not going on a business trip?”

“What? No, I am. That’s what I just told you.”

It sounds like Eddie is driving, maybe, from how far away his voice is, from how he keeps muttering under his breath.

It’s been four months since they sent Chuckles back to hell, four months of trying to align the forgotten past with the present; trying to figure out how they can insert themselves back into each other’s lives. Bev is getting a divorce. Ben bought her a dog.

Richie turns his half-full coffee cup around on the kitchen table and leans his elbow on the morning paper, laptop and work emails pushed aside in favour of jam-and-buttered toast. He says, “Okay, but you said that like telling her was more important than that you’re going. You don’t have to lie to me, Eds, are you actually going to one of those steamy car-fetish conventions?”

Richie and Eddie don’t talk every day, but it’s often, surreal to go from nothing to what feels like everything – tangible ghosts, Eddie’s hot breath in Richie’s ear, murmured through the phone. Eddie calls Richie about his day, about his wife. Calls to chatter, rapid-fire, _you won’t believe the diseases you can get from pigeons,_ too angry and worked up to get all his words out right, inhaling short like he’d talk when they were kids. He still has the same cadence to the way he speaks, even if the things he says are more mature now. (Sometimes.)

There’s something raw about trying to make up for lost time, trying to rekindle twenty-something years of affection between their breasts, across the country.

It’s kind of gay.

(Oh, Richie fucking wishes, cackles to himself every time he thinks it, teetering on the edge of something stupid, swollen. Seventeen.

 _Talk me down._ )

“You motherfucker! Do you need your eyes checked? Can you not see lines? There’s only two lanes here, asshole!”

“You think I need new glasses? I’ve been debating a pair of those chunky red cat-eyes. Want to be the most fuckable librarian in Beverly Hills.”

“Shit, not you—Hey, fuckwad! Fucking watch it!” Eddie shouts again, nearly guttural, wind rushing over the line like his window is open. “Sorry. Look, no, I do have a business trip, alright? But considering what my last trip looked like, Myra almost didn’t let me go back to work. And now that she knows I’ve got this trip, she wants me to quit, or to take her with me.”

“So, what’s the harm? Have a second honeymoon. You can wear those little business shorts paperboys wear in movies and fuck her in the back of your rental car. You know, if you can fit her back there.”

Sometimes he wishes he could choke on his own tongue, doesn’t know why he keeps saying shit like that, doesn’t want to be thinking about it at all.

“That’s not fucking funny, Richie.”

“I never said she was too fat for it to be _possible_ , just that it might be more difficult—”

“I don’t want her to come. I can leave the house by myself. I’m a fucking grown-up.”

And he says it like a grown-up, too.

“You tell her, Spaghetti Man.”

Eddie mutters something under his breath, fast and mean, too fast for Richie to catch. Says, “Shut up, that’s not even why I’m calling. Do you know any good hotels?”

“Specifically, or in general? I hear they have a really ritzy place in Florida where you can have a threesome with Mickey Mouse, or—”

“In L.A., jackass.”

Richie can’t breathe, for a second, thinks he might be having a stroke.

“Uh, why would I need a hotel where I live?”

Fuck.

“You know what, never mind.”

“No look, uh. Your business trip is here? Let me ask around. I can’t think of anywhere off the top of my head, but someone has to know somewhere good. You probably want somewhere clean, kind of clinical, right? Got a budget? Timeframe?”

“Of course it’s got to be fucking clean, Jesus Christ. I’ve got to book soon. And I don’t care about the price, it’s going on the company card.”

“Right, yeah. Can do, Eddie-SpaghettiOs.”

“Eat shit, Richie.”

“Love you too, Shnookums. Keep your eyes on the road.”

There’s a joke in here somewhere, and Richie’s pretty sure he’s found it, running a hand through his hair as he hangs up the phone, cutting off Eddie’s _go fuck yourse-_ with one swipe of his thumb.

_Age? Forty. Pining Status? Desperate. Dating Status? Pathetic. Hotel? Not fucking Trivago._

It’s him, he’s the joke.

Everyone has a hotel suggestion or three, but none of them seem right, all the hotels too glam or too grungy for Eddie’s tastes. Or what Richie thinks are Eddie’s tastes, from the hours they’ve started to spend talking while Eddie drives, or while Richie sits on his back patio at night, watching the blue glow of his swimming pool refract in soft waves.

The ways they’ve changed are interesting. They talk about their friends, old and new, share stories from the last twenty years like they’re sharing secrets. Richie leaves out the guy he thought he loved for ten months in 2005, and the endless string of two-or-three-month stops and starts with guys who thought they’d get to marry rich and famous, might get some good money off getting Richie Tozier to come out. The guys he’d see a handful of times, who never even really wanted to know his name. He leaves his rickety love life barren as Eddie tells him about his relationship horror stories, women he thought he loved, how he met his wife.

They talk about Myra a lot. Too much. So much that Richie isn’t sure who is bringing her up, anymore. And he guesses it’s normal, when Eddie lives with her, loves her.

 _She just really cares about me_ , Eddie insists, always. _She’s overbearing, but she means well_.

Richie’s sure that’s true, but it doesn’t make him feel better, watching the water, trying not to dip his toes in on sweltering nights.

He’s never been polite, but he tries to be, when Eddie rants for twenty minutes straight about how controlling she is, about how _she’s started watching Dr. Oz and thinks she knows everything about everything now. Absolutely everything. And I can’t even get a word in edgewise when she gets like that, you know, she just gets this look, it’s impossible. I think she’s putting something in my coffee, but I don’t know, maybe I’m just paranoid. Fuck_.

He tries to be polite when Eddie gets worked up like that, offers softer jokes. Tries to gently suggest that Myra is absolutely batshit.

Eddie agrees. But Eddie is in love. And Richie knows exactly how nuts that can make someone.

Shadows cast over everything, googly eyes and gleaming teeth giving away the thing that lurks in the dark. Someone is shrieking, screaming, and Richie is thirteen.

He turns around in the school cafeteria, blood thumping in his ears, and thinks he’ll shit himself. Maybe he _has_ already shit himself, from the smell. From the burning that rips from his dick, all the way up behind his eyes. This gnawing, angry shred of heat that keeps his lungs from expanding right, just fills them with fire.

Fear.

_Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock._

_I know your secret, your dirty little secret._

He turns and turns.

Bill sits at one of the tables, eyebrows furrowed, thirteen and thirty at once. He’s always had the best lips, a mouth anyone would want to kiss, even if his tongue is a little twisted. Richie’s chest heaves as he sits across from him. He doesn’t kiss him. Never would.

“I think your phone is ri-ringing,” Bill says, split-bottom-lip jutted out.

It is.

“Fuck,” Richie grumbles. He doesn’t know what time it is, can’t fucking make out the numbers on the clock without his glasses, but he knows it’s too early for _anyone_ to be awake. Too early for anyone to be _alive_.

He doesn’t remember what he was dreaming about, ripped from it too quick, but he knows it was _something_ , and he’s _tired,_ and wants to be asleep _forever_ , so _._

He lies on his side, head resting on his arm as he manages to find his phone and mash the right buttons to answer it. Says, “Tozier,” because he’s too out of it for anything clever. Can’t even come up with an accent to say it in.

“Richie?” The voice on the other end is hushed, a little broken.

Like they’re fifteen-sixteen-seventeen.

“Sorry, I know it’s late.”

“No, it’s—what time is it?”

“About two forty-seven.”

That’s a very precise number, but Richie’s not going to argue, rubbing at his mouth, heart squeezing, feeling thirteen.

 _Talk me down_.

“What’s up, Eds?”

“It’s dumb.”

“Okay, well. You called me, so?”

“Right, right. Sorry.”

They’re quiet a while, listening to each other breathe, and it’s ironic, a little, that listening to Eddie’s body like this is what Richie has wanted for twenty-something years. Listening to the way Eddie’s breath hitches, a little too quick, like he’s grappling a beast he doesn’t want to name, can’t tie down on his own. And they’re still a whole country apart, Beverly Hills, California, to New York, New York. Richie’s Spanish revival mini-mansion with modernist renovations to Eddie’s meticulously spotless historic brownstone.

It’s strange, how the Losers all grew rich. Like there was something in the water in middle-class Derry, other than the interdimensional clowns.

“Sorry,” Eddie says again.

“Eds—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Baby,” Richie says. And he means to say it with his drunk sorority girl voice, the vapid one he knows makes people crack, but it doesn’t come out that way. It comes out straight faced, tired, too tender. “What is it?”

Eddie goes quiet again, a long time. “I had a bad dream.”

It should be funny, coming from a forty-year-old man. The middle line in a stand-up bit.

It’s not funny.

“And you called me?”

“I don’t know, it’s. It’s stupid. I didn’t want to wake Myra. What would I even say? Hey, remember that house that almost killed me? Actually, it was this whole horror-movie-shit ordeal where I almost got murdered twice, by some dick and a killer clown.”

“Hey, take some deep breaths. You sound like an asthmatic.”

“Fuck you.”

Richie grins into his arm. “You have to admit, that was funny.”

“I should have called Bill.”

But Eddie would never do that, and they both know it. Habits still ingrained from years of Richie’s breath on the back of his neck, arms around his waist, the fan across the room rattling in time with their chests.

 _Talk me down_.

“You think you’ll be able to sleep again?”

“I’ll have to try. I work in the morning, and sleep is so important. The average adult needs eight to nine hours. Studies have shown that poor sleep is more likely to cause heart-attacks than fatty or sugary foods. And they’ve also done studies on work performance, and people who get less than six hours and report that they function better that way actually do worse, they’re just too tired to be able to properly gauge their performance. When you don’t get enough sleep, it’s like having an alcohol level of—”

Richie blinks at the red glow of his alarm clock, the blur of useless light that tells him nothing about anything. Makes him think about placing kisses on Eddie’s spine, makes him wish he was bold enough to ever do it.

Feels every inch of fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, all sink into his bones at once.

“Are you even listening to me?”

He’s not. Not really. Moans, “Yeah. You’re so cute when you talk statistics. Really gets me wet. Talk dirty to me, baby.” Manages to land the drunk girl voice this time, keening, a little breathy.

Eddie doesn’t laugh, but Richie knows he thinks Richie is funny.

_I can see your vagina!_

“Beep beep, Richie.”

Or maybe not.

“Go to sleep,” Richie says, like he used to, mouth near Eddie’s skin. “Drink some water. Hold Myra. You’re okay. You got this.”

Eddie’s breathing has evened out, words all a little slurred with sleep. “Yeah, okay. I love you?”

And they all say it to each other. Richie’s said it a thousand times, to Mike, and Bev, and Bill, and Ben, and Stan. He’s said it to Eddie, but not often. Not how he means. Not since the day he moved at eighteen and forgot Mike, and Bev, and Bill, and Ben, and Stan. He’s said it to all of them in the last four months.

But he’s never forgotten Eddie. Hasn’t said it to him, not really.

“I love you too, Spaghetti. Go sink into Myra’s rolls and suffocate in her doughy bosom.”

“Jesus Christ. Never mind, I hate you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gotta give a big thank you to everyone reading, you've all been very kind!  
> I promise this isn't sad for a thousand years. It's already less sad!   
> Big love and thanks to uncaringerinn and unsaltysaltines for reading this over and listening to me whine.  
> As always, feedback would be loved and greatly appreciated.  
> And! Feel free to hit me up on Tumlbr @eternalgoldfish.


End file.
